At Atlantic City’s MudGirls Studios, Dorrie Papadimitriou gives women a fresh start through clay and employment

Six years ago, Eleanor was in recovery from addiction and looking for stability when she found MudGirls Studios in Atlantic City.

Dorrie Papademetriou gave her a chance.

“Dorrie actually gave me my first job getting back on my feet,” Eleanor said.

Eventually, Eleanor needed full-time employment and moved on. But she never forgot MudGirls — or how much she enjoyed creating art there.

Years later, when she found herself between jobs, Papademetriou opened the door again.

“She’s like, ‘You want to come in and work for a while?'” Eleanor recalled. “I’m like, ‘Yeah, I’d love to, because I love art and I make stuff at home, so this is my jam.'”

That open door is at the heart of what Papademetriou has spent the past decade building.

“We didn’t create the studio to make ceramics. We created the studio to help people,” Papademetriou said.

More than clay

MudGirls Studios is a nonprofit clay studio, social enterprise and workforce development program serving women in Atlantic City. Many have faced poverty, housing instability, substance use disorder, mental health challenges or involvement with the criminal justice system.

Papademetriou said the studio tries to remove barriers that can make finding and keeping employment difficult. Women have come through word of mouth and referrals from organizations including the Atlantic County Probation Office and Covenant House.

They earn an hourly wage while learning to make ceramic products ranging from mugs, bowls and platters to corporate gifts and architectural tiles.

“That gives them not just money in their pocket, but dignity — they are working,” Papademetriou said.

The work they produce has traveled far beyond the studio. MudGirls has created corporate pieces and completed public tile installations, including work for Stockton University and a 4,000-tile wall for a cancer center in New Brunswick.

But Papademetriou said the ceramics have always been a means to a larger end.

“The people that we help need someone to give them a second chance,” she said. “They need a leg up, right? They need somewhere to be to give them confidence, to give them skills, to give them friendship, to give them support and so we do that in the studio while we’re making ceramics.”

For Eleanor, that support goes beyond a paycheck or learning how to work with clay.

“I also see how she is with the girls and she asks — what’s going on? What do you need? Do you want to do some training?” Eleanor said. “I see her trying to give me and the girls a hand up.”

Seeing a need in Atlantic City

Papademetriou is a trained graphic designer who has also illustrated children’s books. For years, she wondered how she could use her artistic gifts for something beyond herself.

Part of the answer came while she was working as a museum curator and participated in an exhibition about unhoused people in Atlantic City. The project involved interviewing and photographing people living on the city’s streets.

“When you sit down and talk to people face to face, they’re just like you,” Papademetriou said. “They just had some bad luck, they had difficult life challenges.”

She saw another side of Atlantic City beyond the casinos and boardwalk — a city where, she said, some people had been forgotten.

“A lot of people are disregarded,” she said. “People don’t pay attention to others, especially if they’re in a certain situation.”

So Papademetriou decided to create a place where some of those people would be welcomed.

Ten years ago, she arrived at Adelaide’s Place, an Atlantic City day shelter, carrying clay, rollers and sticks. Once a week, she offered women there an opportunity to work with clay.

They kept coming back.

“I offered a clay experience to the women that were there,” Papademetriou said. “Every week there were some consistent people and those are the women that actually started MudGirls.”

Over the years, Papademetriou estimates about 75 women have come through the program.

MudGirls survived the COVID-19 pandemic by adapting. Papademetriou distributed clay and tools to take home and collected their finished work the following week in a parking lot so they could keep getting paid.

The organization eventually operated from the third floor of an old school above St. Michael’s Church in Atlantic City. As its reputation and workload grew, so did the need for a permanent home.

This year, MudGirls moved into its own building.

“Ten years later — we have our own building,” Papademetriou said with pride.

Clay, community and a sisterhood

On any given day at MudGirls Studios, there is clay to roll, glaze to apply and work to finish.

Zayhana, 28, started at the studio eight months ago with no ceramic experience, said there is something therapeutic about getting her hands into the clay.

“It’s helped me a lot,” she said. “When you have your sad days…you come in and you roll clay, it just makes everything better.”

Before MudGirls, Zayhana held a seasonal position at an Atlantic City casino. The work at MudGirls has given her new skills, friends and a community.

“It’s like we’re like a sisterhood here,” she said.

Zayhana is now preparing to go back to school to become a forensic scientist.

Her path is one example of the different roles MudGirls can play in women’s lives. For some, it can be a bridge to school or another job. For others, it provides longer-term employment. And sometimes, as it did for Eleanor, it can simply be a place to come back to.

Good Soul qualities: ‘She oozes it’

Ann Van Hise worked with Papademetriou years before MudGirls existed and nominated her for the Good Souls Project. She remembers seeing something in her colleague even then — a desire to do more with her talents.

When I asked her definition of a “Good Soul,” she said, “Someone who is very reasonable and has empathy and compassion. And Dorrie has that; I mean, she oozes it.”

Papademetriou is more reluctant to describe herself as a Good Soul.

“I am so honored,” she said. “[But] I don’t think of myself in that way. I just do what I do.”

Her motivation, she said, goes back much further than MudGirls.

Papademetriou grew up in a Greek Orthodox family where helping others was central. As a young woman, she began wondering what she would eventually have to show for her life.

“I do remember, I think maybe I was in my 20s and I said to myself, I don’t wanna be 65 and look at my life and say, what did I do? What have I done?” she recalled.

Now, as she approaches that milestone, Papademetriou has an answer.

“I’m almost 65, and I can say, you know what, I did something I’m really proud of,” she said.